LMH improving patient care by joining new state-wide database

Lawrence Memorial Hospital is now a member of the Kansas Healthcare Information Network, also known as KHIN. It's an online database only accessible by Kansas medical providers and its purpose to better patient care.

"On the patient side, their information is going to be available to any venue in any part of the state and eventually any part of the nation," said Jane Maskus, Vice President and Chief Information Manager at Lawrence Memorial Hospital.

Essentially, if someone were to have a medical emergency and could not make it to their local hospital, the hospital they're admitted to can immediately access their medical records.

"There's a lag time a lot of times where someone has to call a hospital to get their records faxed over and then have to leaf through a bunch of paper, so this would be an electronic form of accessing that information instantly," said Dr. Marc Scarbrough, Chief Medical Information Officer at Lawrence Memorial Hospital.

Doctors will know instantly the patient's medical history, such as what medicines they may be allergic to, or pre-existing conditions. Which in an emergency situation where diagnosis and treatment are needed immediately, doctors said it could make the difference between life or death.

"To a busy emergency room provider it might save them anywhere from 30 minutes to an hour," said Dr. Scarbrough.

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